Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age

Remix Culture Spotlight: Walking on Eggshells

What legal anachronism has to do with Bob Dylan, Picasso and Family Guy.

We’re big proponents of remix culture here because at the core of our mission lies the idea that creativity is merely the ability to combine all the existing pieces in our head — knowledge, memory, inspiration — into incredible new things. Last year, we featured a brilliant panel with Shepard Fairey and CreativeCommons founder Lawrence Lessig titled Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, followed closely by the excellent documentary RiP: A Remix Manifesto.

Today, we bring you Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age — a new documentary from Yale Law & Technology, offering 24 densely compelling minutes of insight into various facets of intellectual property in the age of remix. From appropriation to sampling to creative influence to reuse, the film is an anthology of conversations with some of today’s most notable remix artists and media theorists, exposing the central paradox of contemporary copyright law: How can something originally intended to incentivize people to create serve to hinder new forms of creativity?

You’re not gonna tell me ‘oh, that’s not creative because you’re using someone’s sampled piano note’ There’s no question that at some point using other people’s recordings is 100% your creativity, and at some points it’s 0% your creativity. Then it’s even trickier because sometimes it’s just this recognition — you recognize that this fits, and isn’t that recognition something amazing that maybe no one else recognized?” ~ DJ Earworm

Let’s just take Bob Dylan or somebody like that, whom we take for granted. Does he have a grocery list, an inventory of all of his influences, all the people he has plagiarized and taken from and sampled? These are things that are part of creativity. They are previous things, previous artworks, previous entities. They already exist. Nothing comes out of your ear, out of thin air.” ~ Joy Garnett

For those of us living on the remix side of things, the film’s thesis is hardly groundbreaking. But what makes it important is that it adds another voice to one of the most necessary and urgent creative conversations of our time, building on a narrative that will continue to bend an antiquated law until it breaks and makes room for a more inclusive, era-appropriate conception of creativity.

via GOOD

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RiP: A Remix Manifesto A groundbreaking documentary about the absurdities of copyright law and the future of creativity in the culture of remix....
Music Spotlight: This Must Be The Place Great electro-pop cover of The Talking Heads’ This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody) by Miles Fisher, in the video for which he recreates scenes from iconic film American Psycho....
Versions: The Purpose and Repurposing of Images A visual essay about the re-appropriation of images, the borrowing of intellectual property and the manipulation of visual media....
Street Art: From All Sides & Five Continents The urban anthropology of creativity, or why copyright law is swimming against the cultural current....
Short Film Spotlight: Synesthesia A stunningly shot high-concept short film by director Terri Timely....

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 5:00 am in art, culture, film, music, open-source and was tagged art, culture, documentary, film, free, music, remix.

Remix Culture Spotlight: Walking on Eggshells http://bit.ly/bolf2L

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

audaciousgloop on May 20th, 2010 at 6:07 am

Remix Culture: Walking on Eggshells – http://bit.ly/9EUtay – Worth your time this morning. (via brainpicker)

MattJMcD on May 19th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

gonna come back to this: 24 min documentary Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age http://bit.ly/9EUtay #bookmark

mikearauz on May 20th, 2010 at 8:07 am

RT @brainpicker Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age | Brain Pickings http://bit.ly/bSasej

CECILIA_BXL on May 20th, 2010 at 8:14 am

Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age– excellent new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

brainpicker on May 20th, 2010 at 8:15 am

RT @brainpicker: Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age– excellent new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

braak on May 20th, 2010 at 1:22 am

This is why I started my Tumblog. A compendium of the culture that has influenced me, become me, inspired what I do today. It may seem random, and it probably is, but it is the very personal connection I have with the creativity to which I’ve been exposed.

Peace,
@dedlen

Daniel Edlen on May 20th, 2010 at 8:23 am

bulblab on May 20th, 2010 at 8:29 am

creativeboomldn on May 20th, 2010 at 8:29 am

@brainpicker: Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age– excellent new #Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

ctdata on May 20th, 2010 at 8:40 am

chobbs405 on May 20th, 2010 at 1:46 am

nickdiamondjr on May 20th, 2010 at 1:55 am

RT @brainpicker Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age– excellent new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

aceupdate on May 20th, 2010 at 9:37 am

HHMINEWS on May 20th, 2010 at 9:40 am

keeleyjim on May 20th, 2010 at 2:40 am

@GCUculturalbus recommends Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age–excellent documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

GCUculturalbus on May 20th, 2010 at 3:11 am

If you missed it ? Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale docu about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

brainpicker on May 20th, 2010 at 1:05 pm

Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

openculture on May 20th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

If you missed it-Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age. Imp Yale doc about copyright http://is.gd/chyow via @brainpicker

mojave44 on May 20th, 2010 at 6:10 am

RT @openculture: Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

dittman on May 20th, 2010 at 1:26 pm

RT@openculture: Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

waaier on May 20th, 2010 at 1:37 pm

@brainpicker awesome- Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale docu about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

maddie_marston on May 20th, 2010 at 1:39 pm

@brainpicker thanks- Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale docu about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

maddie_marston on May 20th, 2010 at 6:40 am

RT @openculture Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age– important new Yale documentary about copyright http://is.gd/chyow

nadjagaerlan on May 20th, 2010 at 7:10 am

Fantastic day, made even better by this: “Walking on eggshells, borrowing culture in the remix age”: http://is.gd/chyow

pragerd on May 20th, 2010 at 7:27 am

RonaldChin on May 20th, 2010 at 8:35 am

Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age (Yale Law & Tech Documentary) http://bit.ly/bM3bm9

lawlib on May 20th, 2010 at 9:02 am

Remix Culture Spotlight: Walking on Eggshells http://j.mp/cwduir We at PT love remix culture as well!

paradisetossed on May 20th, 2010 at 5:36 pm

ashetler on May 20th, 2010 at 11:15 am

? Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age – important new Yale docu on copyright http://is.gd/chyow @brainpicker

Arch4HumanityND on May 20th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

[...] 21, 2010 by tsheko Just found a very interesting documentary in a blog post on Brain Pickings. It’s 24 minutes long but well worth watching. a new documentary from Yale Law & [...]

Walking on Eggshells: Borrowing Culture in the Remix Age | Brain …: Interestingness, curated – picking culture’s… http://bit.ly/b3YOZc